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makoyiThe goal of these instructions is to help you create a PDF sewing pattern without having to buy pattern design software. The progam I use for doing this is LyX which is free for download and multi-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux). While it's designed more for word processing, it is possible to make a clean-looking pattern, with to-scale pattern pieces, step-by-step instructions and images all in the same file so you can distribute your pattern designs online fairly painlessly. In my previous post, I went over some of the pros and cons of LyX so check that out for a bit more info.
Materials:
paper, tape, pencil, ruler, black marker, scanner, your usual graphics software (ex: GIMP), LyX (a free typesetting program for document layout) or another program for creating PDF documents, a PDF viewer, scissors
Prepare your pattern paper:
1. First, mark 1 inch margins all around on a lot of sheets of printer paper. (My cropped jacket pattern took 18 pages. A princess-seamed jacket takes about 30 pages. A coat or dress pattern may take twice that.) You can either do this with a pencil and ruler (tedious and time-consuming) or you can use your graphics software to draw them in on a single page and then print as many copies as you need.
In GIMP, this is very easy to do with the help of the Grid. Configure it to half-inch intervals (make sure you’ve also set Show Grid in the View menu). Then draw in the 1 inch margin lines by clicking on the intersection of the 1” grid lines and using the Shift key to draw a straight line to the next margin corner, etc, etc until you have a box.
2. Fold the top and left margins of each page under. Don’t cut the margins off because then your scans won’t be the right size.
3. Tape the pages together with between 5 and 8 pages per row and as many columns as needed, overlapping the folded edge over the non-folded edge so none of the margins are showing.
Design!
1. Design your garment as a muslin or out of scrap.
2. When you have it the way you want it, take the pieces apart.
Drawing the Pattern:
3. Before using those pieces as pattern pieces to make your own garment out of nice fabric, trace them in pencil onto the prepared enormous pattern paper. If you plan to grade the pattern (make multiple sizes), make sure you leave extra space around each piece.
4. Also use your ruler to draw a square on page 1 that is exactly 4 inches by 4 inches. This will help people who print your pattern to make sure the pieces have printed correctly to scale.
5. To help people tape your pattern pages together, you need to make it clear how the pages fit together. You can either number each page with a number (row) and a letter (column), or draw and label some sort of symbol across each page break. I tend to use a diamond with a cross through it drawn half on each page and then each symbol gets a number which is written twice beside it (once on each page so it’s easy to match them up later).
6. Label each pattern piece with a number and a description.
7. Label any pieces that are cut on the fold.
8. Use a ruler to draw a grainline indicator on any piece which is not cut on a fold.
9. If you are going to grade your pattern, do so now, in pencil. I will not explain how to grade here. I can however, recommend Threads Magazine’s articles called “Making Sense of Pattern Grading” and “Quick Reference for Cut and Spread Pattern Grading”. Google them. They’re online and free. If that’s too confusing (nothing wrong with that – it totally could be, especially if you design to your own body and don’t have an hourglass figure), try using a commercial pattern for reference on how much to add in various places around your pattern.
Important Note: Make sure you write down the important measurements (bust, waist, hips, etc) for your garment and also note whether those are finished garment measurements or body measurements. If measuring these from the pattern pieces, remember to subtract seam allowances and any darts or pleats.
10. Make any marks to aid in sewing – ex: position for buttons, where to gather, pleat or pintuck lines, etc.
11. (Optional) Write how many to cut of which fabric on each piece.
12. When you’ve finished sketching and you’re sure everything is right, go over all the pencil lines in black marker.
13. With scissors, carefully cut the tape between each piece of paper without cutting the paper itself. Don’t try to peel the tape up because there will be places you’ve drawn over the tape and you still need those lines.
14. Using a scanner, scan each page. Use the scanner settings dialog to choose the best settings for your image – usually the default settings for grayscale will work but if you preview or test scan an image and messy eraser marks or stray pencil lines show up, try upping the scan contrast.
15. Save each scanned page as a jpg or png file with a filename reflecting the page number. Keep them all in the same folder.
Making the Technical Drawing:
1. In GIMP (or your graphics program of choice), draw an outline sketch, front and back, of what your garment will look like. Don’t make it fancy, don’t fill it in with fabric patterns, don’t color it, don’t use gradients – just show how it all goes together.
2. Export to (or Save as) a jpeg or png file.
Creating the PDF:
1. Open LyX and click the File menu and select New to create a new document.
2. Click the Document menu and select Settings to open the document options dialog window. From the list in the white box, select “Document Class” and in the first pulldown menu select “Book (Memoir)”. In the box below that labeled “Custom”, type “12pt”. From the list in the white box, select “Page Layout” and in the pulldown menu beside “Headings Style”, choose “Empty”. Click the OK button.
3. Type your pattern title. Leave your cursor on that line and click on the pulldown menu (at the moment, it says “Standard”) in the toolbar just below the File and Edit menus. About two-thirds down is the option Title. Select it.
4. Hit Enter and type “Pattern by:” and your name/username/company or whatever you want to go by as the author. Then with your cursor still on that line, go back to the pulldown menu and select Author (the option just below Title).
5. Hit Enter again and type the sizing information for your pattern. If those correspond to commercial pattern sizes, you can indicate those, otherwise just state how many sizes the pattern includes and the range of bust, waist, and/or hip measures that includes. Ex: “One Size Only - Bust size: 36-39 inches” or “In 4 Sizes - for waists approx. 30-36 inches”. With your cursor on that line, click the Paragraph Settings button (on the far right of the second toolbar, with a blue symbol like a backwards P). In the Alignment column, select “Center” and click OK.
+++ Stop and take a moment to save your document. Save periodically as you work. LyX does have document recovery in the event of a crash, but let’s try not to need it +++
6. Hit Enter. In the Insert menu, select Graphics. Beside File, click Browse and navigate to the folder containing your technical drawing, select it and click Open. If your technical drawing is large, check the box beside “Scale Graphics (%)” and choose a percent to resize your drawing to, then Click OK. Give LyX a moment to load your image into the document. With your cursor still beside the technical drawing image, click the Paragraph Settings button again and again select Alignment – Center.
7. Next, type a description of the pattern (ex: This is a print-at-home PDF pattern designed for 18 pages of US Letter-sized paper.) and of the garment your pattern makes (ex: Use this pattern to make yourself an a-line skirt with a side zipper, contrast trim around the hem, and belt loops so you can accessorize with your favorite belt.).
8. Hit Enter. Type “Pattern Information” and use the pulldown menu in the toolbar to select “Section*”. This creates an unnumbered Section called “Pattern Information”. If you have Outline selected in the Document menu, you will see it automatically added to the outline so you can click on it to navigate quickly while you work.
9. Hit Enter and type “Pattern Pieces Included:”, then use the pulldown menu to make that a “Subsection*”.
10. Hit Enter and make a list of the pattern pieces and the numbers you have assigned them.
11. Hit Enter and make a “Subsection*” for any Notions required to make your garment.
12. Make another Subsection* with recommendations for the type of fabrics to use (optional).
13. Create a new Section* for “Printing Instructions”.
14. Hit Enter and type the first step of your printing instructions. Usually, this is a good place to start:
Important! You must change your print settings to print this document to actual size. Page 1 contains a 4 inch square box – measure it on your printout to make sure it has printed exactly to scale.
Without hitting enter, use the pulldown menu in the toolbar to select “Enumerate”. This will automatically number your instruction and unlike previous selections from that menu, it won’t change back to Standard automatically so you can continue to type instructions and each time you hit Enter, it will number your entry. If you need to include an instruction that is more than one paragraph long (not recommended for clarity’s sake but sometimes necessary), hold the Control key down while pressing Enter.
15. Once you’ve finished your Printing Instructions section, describing how to print out and tape together your pattern pages, if your garment is graded in multiple sizes, you need to insert a size chart. First type a note of whether the measurements in the chart will be body measurements (so the seamstress should choose the size with her exact measurements) or garment measurements (so she should choose the size which is slightly larger than her measurements).
Note: Since many hobby-seamstresses do not know off-hand how much wearing ease should be allotted for different types of garments, it is usually better to use the body measurements chart. This means you will have to convert the numbers in the chart you wrote while grading your pattern to have the appropriate amount of ease for each measurement and taking into account the design fit and garment type.
Next, to insert a table in LyX, click the Insert menu and select “Table”. In the dialog that pops up, select the number of rows and columns you need. Figure on one row for the sizes and one for each important measurement. Figure on one column for each size and one for the labels for your measurements. Then click OK.
Click in each box and type to fill out the table. Do not use Tab to navigate between boxes as pressing Tab brings up an Auto-complete dialog in some cases. When the table is complete, click outside of it and hit enter.
16. Start a new Section* for “Cutting Instructions”. List which pieces to cut from which fabric/lining/interfacing/etc and how many of each piece.
17. Start a new Section* for Sewing Instructions. Hit enter and select Enumerate from the toolbar pulldown menu, then begin typing instructions on how to sew your garment together. If you want to illustrate any steps, you can insert graphics the same way you inserted the Technical Drawing.
18. Once you’ve finished the sewing instructions, hit enter again and start a Section* for the pattern pages.
19. Hit Enter. In the Insert menu, find “Formatting” and select “Page Break”.
19. On the next line, Hold Control and hit the letter “L”. A box with a red outline is inserted. In that box, paste this exactly:
\addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{-1in}
\addtolength{\evensidemargin}{-1in}
\addtolength{\topmargin}{-1in}
Click to the right of the red box and hit enter.
20. In the Insert menu, select Graphics. Use the browse button to find and select the image file of page 1 of your pattern and click Open. Before closing the graphics dialog, select the tab that says “LaTeX and LyX Options” and then uncheck the box that says “Show in LyX”. Then click the OK button. A black outlined box will appear with the filename and “Not Shown”. (If you want to see the preview of each image in the document, you can leave the Show in LyX box checked, but this isn’t recommended since you’ll be inserting a lot of large images now.
21. Repeat to insert several more pages.
22. Instead of using the Insert menu to insert each graphic individually, once you have several graphics in a row, copy them and paste them, then click the first pasted box and change the filename to the next page in order. If you’ve kept organized and put each scanned image in the same folder with page numbers for filenames, you can just type the next filename without having to browse to the file. This will speed up the graphics insertion process a lot.
23. Once you have all the pages of your pattern inserted, in the View menu, select “View [PDF (pdflatex)]”. Wait a moment while LyX compiles the document and hands it off to your PDF viewer (which will open automatically). Once you have the PDF open, you can make changes in LyX, then in the Insert menu, select “Update[PDF (pdflatex)]” to see the changes reflected in the PDF.
24. When everything is to your liking, use the Save As function in your PDF viewer to save the PDF to your pattern image folder. Note: Do not use the Save function – LyX creates a file in the Temp folder and it will save over that only to erase it when the document is closed. You need to specify a file location and filename for your PDF manually.
Create a Preview Image:
1. Last, you’ll need to make a pattern cover as a preview image and/or advertisement for your design. Use GIMP or your graphics program of choice. Your pattern cover will need to include the title of the pattern, your name, a photo of your finished garment (optional), the technical drawing, and the size information and chart. Export or Save As a jpg or png file.
And that's it! Upload your pdf and cover to your site of choice.
If you don't have a site of your own, deviantArt.com has this new feature where you can set up an account and post digital downloads for sale. Pros: Unlike most dedicated pattern sites (like Burdastyle, for example) which don't allow users to sell patterns, this gives you the chance to actually make money. DeviantArt also has a long history of paying artists from their print sales business so they are reputable in that regard. Cons: Your prospective customers have to have an account and buy site credits called "points" in order to buy your pattern. There's not a lot of built-in foot traffic, especially for sewing patterns, so you'll have to draw people in, advertise on other sites, and convince people that your patterns are worth buying. And the last con, which is a big one: Deviantart's support staff are extremely unhelpful so if you encounter a problem with the site, you're on your own.